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Friday, April 29, 2011

Granting Clemency

I am not kidding you when I say that this little chair was on its way to certain furniture death until I yelled “STOP!” to my husband nanoseconds before he threw it into the garbage can. So little did he care about this chair he didn’t even want to use it as kindling! This little fella has been in his family for years and years {mostly being used as a chew toy in someone’s dank basement} and I just couldn’t bear to let it go to the dump. It was given to us when our first little guy was born more than two years ago, at which time it was once again banished to a basement—this time, ours. We've been in purge mode so my husband thought it was time for it to go, but I had other plans.

I must be honest and tell you that there were probably a half-dozen moments where I wished I hadn’t used my good name to save this little beast, but I didn’t want to hear an “I told you so.” It was smelly. The rope-seat was caked with nastiness. It was so gross I won’t even share my hypothesis of what it was. I like you that much. I thought it would be simple to just untie and unfurl the rope, but due to gross-ity {I think I just made that word up} I used bolt cutters to cut the rope. Seriously.

Now, what you’ve been patiently waiting for:

Before

Sadly {or gladly?} my point-and-shoot didn’t capture the detail of this little gremlin. The backing was some type of houndstoothy contact- or wallpaper.

Once I had the rope and contact paper off, the chair was literally falling apart. I shored it up with Gorilla wood glue and filled in some of the teeth marks along the back of the chair with wood putty. This little guy HAD to be painted. I would have liked to keep a natural look, but it was in such bad shape and needed so much repair I had to paint in order to resuscitate it.

After a light sanding I sprayed it with Zinsser Cover Stain primer to seal the stains and smells.

I then gave it a few coats of Rustoleum Warm Yellow. Such a friendly color.

Once dry, I added a new weaved seat as well as batting and fabric to the back of the chair to complete the makeover. How adorable is this little fella now? So sorry for thinking you a gremlin.